Friday, October 30, 2009

This morning, I dropped off Kate and Jane and 23 cupcakes off at their school, Erik without cupcakes at his school, and then took Sylvia shopping. By now it was at least 7:30am...

We finally got pumpkins, since that seems the right thing to do three weeksone weekfive days the day before Halloween. Did I mention it was before 8am when we came out of the grocery store with a fortune spent on pumpkins and enough Halloween candy to last us till Christmas?

Tonight it was time to carve these pumpkins. We had only two kids cut themselves, but everyone kept all fingers and toes, so I count that as a success.

Almost Halloween and lotsa cupcakes floating around. I might be behind on everything else in my life, but I do get around to baking cupcakes.

Kate brought 23 cupcakes into school today to share with her classmates. She baked them mostly by herself, with minimal help from me.

The really good news is that I just figured out an old camera a friend gave me, which I can use till I either find my camera battery charger or get around to visiting my friend to charge my camera battery. This is one of the first pictures I took with the camera, pretty cool. Today is pumpkin carving day, so there definitely will be more pictures later. It is a pretty small camera, so I might use it as 'always with me' camera and life will be perfect ^^

Friday, October 23, 2009

Day 4 of trying to find the Hunter's Moon, day 4 of being unsuccessful and only so many ways I can describe that. We had a school Open House for Kate and Jane which was much fun, but I didn't bring my camera since I still don't have the right lens AND my camera battery charger is somewhere in the house and I don't know where and for all practical purposes I am without a camera now. Which is not good, but not horrible either, I can charge my battery at my friend's house anyway, just need to do it. Or , gasp, find my OWN charger. When I clean up more of my house that is.

Maybe tonight we'll find the moon, but for now sharing pics of 2001, when Erik was a wee baby and very cute.

These were the times when people would go 'Are they all yours????' all the time. When they would ask 'Do they all have the same father?' or remark 'You must be crazy!' I would have been offended if I hadn't been so busy chasing kids and enjoying life.

I look back and see tons of family fun and closeness. Yes, parenting six kids was a lot of work, but the memories of the good times are stronger than the memories of waking up at 2am to nurse the baby yet again. Which explains why we had a seventh, I guess ^^

Back to the night sky, I remember the times when we would sleep out in our front yard, on the driveway, watching a meteor shower. Even meteors were easier to find than this darned hunter's moon. Of course, I am conveniently skipping over the meteor shower a few days ago when we had too much cloud cover to even attempt waking up at 4am to see them. Maybe tonight we'll see the moon!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Moonset wasn't till 7:45pm, so shouldn't be a problem, should it? Apart from the cloud cover, that is. Although later there were less clouds, but the moon must have been low enough in the sky that we STILL couldn't find the darned thing.

Three days and no moon. I wonder how many variations of 'I didn't see the moon!' Erik can write down in his moon journal.

Erik and Sylvia went on a field trip today to see a play of 'Harold and the Purple Crayon' in which Harold wants to go take a walk in the moonlight, but when there is no moon, he uses his magical crayon to create one. I feel that we sure could use one of those purple crayons!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

We were happily driving along, on our way to yet another DNF (Did Not Find) cache when I yelled at my friend 'Stop the car!'

I saw something in the valley. A lot of somethings. It is a rafter of turkeys!

They were happily doing whatever turkeys do and I got a bunch of pictures made before we were off to see the sunset.

This morning I almost tripped over turkeys in my own neighborhood, but of course I did not have my camera with me. Which clearly is a mistake. I am thinking of getting a cheaper and smaller point and shoot which I can carry with me 100 % of the time. So many times I think 'Oh, I wish I had my camera!'

Day two of this moon cycle. Sunset was at 6pm, Moon set at 7pm so there was only a small window of opportunity. I kept looking around for the darned moon while my kids were playing Log Roll, but did I find it? No, I didn't!

When the kids finally returned to the car, I asked them to look for it, and did they find it? No, they didn't. We did see clouds. And more clouds. And then some clouds. Statistically once in a while the moon should have been visible, but it must not have read the statistics books.

We drove to the supermarket, checking the sky before and after our shopping. By the time we came out, it was dark, still before moon set, but the moon was hiding behind the clouds or buildings or trees, since it wasn't visible for sure. Hmmm, day two of being unsuccessful, maybe this hunter's moon is just an urban legend?

At least we did see Jupiter which was very bright, and then we went inside the house to eat pizza. Maybe we'll find the moon tomorrow!

Today Kate PASSED her hearing and vision after failing miserably in the school nurse's office last month. Phew, even although I wasn't worried, it still is nice to be able to cross it off my 'list of things to monitor / wonder about.' Afterwards we went to King Arthur Flour and treated ourselves in their excellent bakery. Who would not love chocolate croissants, French rolls, sticky buns, eclairs and chocolate mousse? Afterwards my kids decided to run off some of that sugar by running around being very silly.

I sat in the van and read my book until I realized I had my camera AND my telelens with me and could take spy pictures without anyone ever knowing. I had NO idea what game they were playing, but there was a lot of running, jumping and rolling around.

Tonight I asked Kate and she told me 'Well, it is that game which we always WANT to play on your bed, but you yell at us when we do and you lay down and people jump over you and you are a log and people jump and try not the logs and it is SO MUCH FUN!' Geez, I wonder why I don't want them to play that on my bed in the middle of the night ^^ They call it log roll. Or just logs for short.

Nice to see them running around like this and I actually got reading time and they got tired. I hope. Maybe. I refuse to believe otherwise.

Monday, October 19, 2009

You know, before I had kids, I always imagined that we would sit around the dinner table, having uplifting and interesting conversations, sharing our day's happenings, solving the world's problems, listening politely and respectful to each other's stories. It turns out that reality isn't always like that...

Instead my kids like to talk about gross things. Tell scary stories starring colorful cows. Hang upside down from the chandelier. Or copy each other or themselves over and over and over and over and over and over.

Tell each other to 'please stop talking now!' in somewhat ruder and louder terms. Scream at the top of their lungs when someone scrapes a fork on a plate. Which is quite often when you are actually trying to, you know, EAT at the table.

Reality sure is very different from my imagination, but I have decided that my imagination was just boring and that reality is much better and will generate more blog fodder anyway.

Erik's classroom is doing a lovely project which involves keeping a so called moon journal. We are going out every night observing the moon, starting at today's new moon (first day of this Hunter's Moon)

A more organized person would have looked up what time the moon was rising and setting today, but in my case I didn't even check my GPS till I came home from the laundromat (don't ask) at 7:30pm. Guess what time moon set was? Yes, 6:22pm. Oops! Day one of the Moon Journal Project and epic fail already. Losing the moon... Showing what an involved parent I am, right? I justified it to myself by saying that we can't really see the new moon anyway, so just as well it wasn't going to be in the sky at all.

I took Erik and Sylvia around the block to hunt for the hunter's moon, even knowing that there wasn't going to be one, but still collecting observations for Erik's journal. We saw the Big Dipper. We saw Cassiopeia. We smelled roasted marshmallows. We heard dogs bark, which got translated into 'We heard WOLVES!' by Erik. We saw an airplane which got transmorphed into an UFO in Erik's story. It is awesome to have a vivid imagination ^^

Tomorrow the moon will set around 7pm, an hour after the sunset at 6pm, so I will make sure we actually get outside BEFORE it sets. Or we will have to make up our own stories yet again, which is fun anyway.